


Our Way to Fall

by averysubtleart



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Limbo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 09:07:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averysubtleart/pseuds/averysubtleart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's looking for something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Way to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> After I read gyzym's [I'll see you when the sun sets east (don't forget me)](http://gyzym.livejournal.com/50204.html?page=3), there was this urge and I felt like I had to write one, so there you have it.
> 
> Also, I don't actually speak Finnish so initially I had to google translate the Finnish text, but the accuracy of google translate's results are... dubious. Hence, the italicised words.
> 
> Lastly, (like all my works) this is unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine. Concrit's definitely welcome! :D

"Jesus fucking christ, Arthur!"  
-  
He wakes up and he's lying face down in a field of grass, tall, long, willowy green blades that sway in the slightest wind. The ground smells like morning dew, although it's completely dry. He pushes himself up into a sitting position. He's not sure where he is, doesn't think he'll ever know where this place is, but he knows one thing. He's looking for something.  
  
So he starts with what he knows first: to stand up and walk in a chosen direction. The field looks the same whichever direction he scans over, tall, long, willowy blades of green that sway in the slightest wind, tickling his calves. There isn't a scarecrow in the distance, neither is there even a crow flying off to wherever it's flying off to. He squints up at the sky and _oh look_ , he can't find the sun too. It's like someone turned on the lights in a room but there aren't any visible light sources. He exhales, long and slow, and his mind supplies, _right_ , which is the direction he goes traipsing in.  
  
He walks and walks.  
  
(Isn't it weird that he has no idea how his voice sounds like)  
  
The grass tickles his calves occasionally.  
  
(Does he even have a name in the first place)  
  
There isn't a sun wherever it's supposed to be and it's still light and it's supposed to be hot but it isn't _where are the clouds_ and he squints up into the sky and can't find any. It feels like he's been walking on and on for ages and from where he is now, it looks like it's miles away from where he started from. He thinks he's thirsty, and almost coincidentally there's a faint sound of water running somewhere in the distance.   
  
He runs towards the sound of the water and it feels like forever but he reaches it eventually. It's actually a stream and the water's clear and inviting. He squats and cups his hands into a makeshift bowl and sips gratefully at it. It feels like it's going to be a long day; he thinks of a bottle and one materialises in his hand.  
  
 _Interesting_ , he muses. It's like magic, only that another part of him believes there's got to be some kind of science behind it. He files it away as something he'll figure out later and goes to fill his bottle.  
  
He follows the water downstream and eventually, it dries out into a trickle. The land becomes parched and dry, the vegetation growing increasingly sparse with every step he takes forward. He knows it should be blisteringly hot right now, but the beads of sweat aren't appearing on his forehead. Nonetheless, his mouth feels parched. He uncaps his bottle and takes a swig out of it and is shocked to find the water evaporating at an alarming rate. He quickly recaps it and squints at the sky. The sky still remains stubbornly lit like before, no sign of how long he's already been moving for. He can't tell the time like this.  
  
When he looks back down at the ground, the initially ochre earth turns an angry, ferrous brick red. Cracks start appearing at the bottom of his feet and they grow exponentially, the lines intersecting in a web woven out of unspoken things yet to be discovered. Instinct makes him step back, away from where danger may lie beneath the cracks and onto the safe, solid platform of the earth.  
  
It isn't what he expects, though.   
  
Oddly enough, the lines don't spread haphazardly. They simply grow big enough until a certain point where it seems necessarily enough and then they just... Stop. As if it's controlled by someone. Now the slabs of earth look like pieces of mosaic titles.   
  
He moves back until he can get a clearer view of everything and isn't it awfully interesting, innit, that it's spelled out like a message now. "E A M E S", the lines read.   
  
He doesn't know his name, doesn't know how his voice sounds like. He thinks this might be somewhere in Madagascar, where the forests used to be and now have been deforested. But then again, he can't know for sure. He knows that he's looking for something, and right now, the only thing he's come away with is the word "Eames". It isn't what he's looking for, but it'll do for the moment. He'll keep searching.  
  
The ground beneath him begins to heat up and it's only then when he realises he's barefooted. When he starts hopping about on the spot from the heat, his feet making hissing noises whenever they come into contact with the ground, he thinks _shoes_ , and his feet are thankfully covered by a pair of brown Toms.  
  
He continues walking forward, and it escalates into a run when the ground honestly proves to be too bloody hot to step on. He can feel his soles melting slowly and the ground becoming less and less solid and more like non-Newtonian fluid. Suddenly, the world flows out from right beneath him like molten lava and in that instantaneous moment he's no longer standing on anything anymore, he's suspended mid-air before gravity catches up with him and he falls and he falls and falls.  
  
(He's Alice falling down the rabbit hole)  
  
The lava gushes around him but he never gets burnt to bits at all he doesn't give a shit why he's alive thank fucking god he's alive.  
  
(No he isn't Alice he's Eames)  
  
The world around him is red and more red and he thinks he might make out a face from it, but it's too blurred and he can't.  
  
(He's Eames and he's looking for something or someone and he's falling and he's going to land on solid ground _he has to_ he can't die now he's on a mission)  
  
When he lands, he lands softly on a patch of grass, the leaves still freshly covered with dew. The lava has thankfully disappeared, (or more like evaporated into the air) but so has his bottle and shoes. Doesn't matter anyway; he likes the feeling of walking on grass and soil barefoot.  
  
He walks and walks an occasionally he spots some flowers and a ring of toadstools to his right, the almost glowing red caps standing out in the monochrome olive green and dark brown foliage. He's staring at the toadstools that somehow manage to fascinate him that he doesn't notice there's a branch broken off from a tree lying right in front of him. The next step he takes causes a loud crack to resound through the air, the same time (he thinks) he hears a bullet being fired from somewhere behind him.  
  
The bullet is just _this_ close from blowing his left ear off and embeds itself in a birch tree. He drops himself immediately on to the ground and presses himself firmly on it - adrenaline coursing through his veins, his heart racing, his breathing shallow - and waits.  
  
When he's fairly certain no other shots are going to come flying over and attempt to decapitate him, he stands slowly and scans the surroundings. The coast appears to be clear. That's good, he thinks, and proceeds to examine the tree.  
  
From what it appears, the entire tree is surprisingly intact, no exploded splinters littering the ground at all. The bullet isn't buried very deeply, either. Half of the bullet is protruding out of the tree trunk and he's vaguely reminded of Robin Hood and his arrows, except that this might be the modern equivalent of it. He lets an amused smile come on his face and notices that the bullet's engraved with words. After throwing a hasty glance around again to make sure there aren't any ninjas around waiting to assassinate him, he pulls the bullet free from the tree trunk.  
  
 _Why are you here?_  
  
The slanting script the words are written in looks familiar but he can't place it at all, it's like trying to recall a memory that's long forgotten, lost deep in the recesses of the mind. He looks up at the sky in frustration and _oh look_ , the clouds are finally back where they're supposed to be. Though, there seems to be some movement in the clouds that makes them look tumultuous. He frowns.  
  
 _Fuck, Eames, if I have to go down there-_ , the first cloud is saying.  
  
(It's so odd he doesn't even know what the movements in the cloud mean how can he tell that it's talking where's 'down there')  
  
 _Darling, kindly shut the fuck up now because you're coming back up with me_ , the second cloud returns.  
  
(Now why does the second cloud remind him so much of himself)  
  
The clouds are now cumulo-nimbus and it looks like they're angry (???) but they're both a sad, melancholy and yet a grim, serious grey now.  
  
Ha, the first cloud laughs and it's honestly really unnerving to note how humourless it sounds and the world rumbling along with it. _I like your optimism_ , it says, _but we don't live in a world with unicorns and glitter. These are angry men with bullets killing people._ _  
_  
 _Arthur, love, stop talking or you're going to lose more blood_ , the second cloud retorts sharply.  
  
(He can feel the emotions of the second cloud, what the bloody buggering hell?)  
  
There is a moment of silence, then - _I_ _will find you, Arthur, don't you fucking dare disappear_ , the second cloud says fiercely.  
  
The first cloud appears to be smiling, albeit a sad little smile, and- _I'll be waiting for you, Mr Eames_ , the first cloud replies. There's a melodramatic clap of thunder and the sky clears.  
  
Thankfully, the conversation ends before his eyes start to water from staring at the sky. He looks back down to earth and has to spend a few moments blinking away the effects of his visual purple. Bits of information are coming to him now.   
  
He's called Eames and he's here to bring a man named Arthur back somewhere. It's not much, but it'll do for now.  
  
He turns to his right and walks into a path that looks fairly well worn, as though it's been used by many trekkers before. Occasionally along the way, he takes out the bullet he's pocketed and runs his thumb across the writing, thinking about who might have written that. It's entirely possible that some random bloke who thinks he's trespassed some unseen territory boundary wrote it, but it's more likely that it's written by Arthur. He's not sure why he's obliged to bring Arthur back 'up' though. Arthur sounds like a pretty important person to him.   
  
Huh.  
  
More than a few times, he ends up in dead ends. He's got no compass; he doesn't bother thinking about having one and anyway, he doesn't need one. He knows it's a maze, the pathways are meant to only let you walk either forwards or backwards. He's just merely relying on his instincts.  
  
When he turns around from the dead ends, there are vines creeping up from behind him and sealing off the paths almost the moment he turns his back on them. By the time he's walked back to the intersection point between the two pathways, there's already a wall of sprawling green lines at where the path used to be. It's like trying to hide a secret that accidentally got exposed, he muses. And a bit disquieting.  
  
It feels like it's been a long while (again, he can't tell, time's ambiguous wherever he goes) before he reaches the centre of the labyrinth, or at least that's what he thinks it is. He's got no ball of string to show him his way out and in his face is the proverbial Minotaur.  
  
It's a door, to be exact. A grand oak door with a simple but exquisite doorknob. There isn't a peephole, so he can't see anything beyond it.   
  
He's contemplating whether to turn and find his way back out of the single entrance or not but when he turns around, he sees that he's left with no choice. Less than half a metre away from him it the wall of vines and it's continuing to grow awfully fast, like a mutated plant. He'd pretty sure if he doesn't move now, the vines are going to strangle him dead.  
  
 _Fuck_ , he thinks, _fuckfuckfuck_ and bolts for the door, wrenches it open and-  
  
He stumbles into an apartment that looks familiar. The window grills are made of cheap bronze spray painted in black and the tiles are cheap too, ivory white and a bit of grout in between them. He walks out into the living room and there's an ugly, batty sofa made of fake leather along the length of the wall and a wooden table sitting in the middle. There are noises in the background and it sounds like English, but not quite. He thinks he might be in the residential districts of Hong Kong, or maybe Singapore.  
  
When he sticks his head out of the window, the sky is mercifully clear and unpolluted. Singapore, no doubt. He vaguely recalls being on a job here with Arthur to extract from their mark, a portly man in his late fifties with a paunch, going by the name of Tan Boon Kheng. It was an easy in-and-out job, find out how he killed the client's husband, report back to her. The mark wasn't even militarised.  
  
He remembers that the only problem was that the mark was some kind of loan shark and that when they woke up, there was a bunch of his men - runners - looming over them, their beefy hands covered with hideously obnoxious dragon tattoos in torn wife beaters and ugly chains clutching butcher knives. "Chao ji bai," one of them snarled. "You mudderphucker."  
  
He remembers bursting into guffaws of laughter, Arthur too, deep, hearty and highly amused, (he doesn't think he has heard Arthur laugh this much before in his entire life and laughs even harder at that) before the slashing began.  
  
Arthur managed to suffocate (or maybe knock them out unconscious, he won't know) every one of them with a pillowcase before they got out of the home, the PASIV device a glinting silver suitcase in his hand as they stepped out like a pair of well-dressed Caucasian salesmen who just made a good deal.  
  
Now, as he steps out of the flat, his thumb grazing across the bullet in his pocket, the world around him goes silent. He can feel not just a pair of eyes staring at him. He freezes.

He takes a deep breath, unfreezes himself, and jogs down the staircase to the void deck. He keeps his breathing even as he strides across the void deck, accidentally brushing across a dark haired lady carrying bags of groceries. She turns to face him – a beautiful Vietnamese lady with high cheekbones, except that that her eyes are cold as ice. Even as he attempts to break eye contact with her, continuing to walk forward, he notices that she’s stopped where she was previously, still pinning her stare at him.

When he walks past the lift, the lift doors open and there’s a Spanish girl of eight staring at him, with the same coldness in her green eyes as that had been in the Vietnamese lady’s eyes. He stares back at her, his look carefully blank, but her gaze becomes colder than before, icy even. He blinks and quickens his pace out of the void deck. The world is still deathly silent; the only sound heard is his breathing and the sound of his sneakers on concrete. The people are staring at him.

He brisk walks through another void deck, two, crosses a playground and half a road. He doesn’t dare to turn around; he can feel the people who are staring at him are following him too, hot on his heels. Out of his periphery vision he catches sight of the people reflected on a windscreen and stops, there. He wants to run, but he feels like he needs to confront them.

When he turns around, he can almost feel his heart thumping against his ribcage. There’s at least 20 people gathered a couple of metres away from him, their stare glacial. He feels like he shouldn’t know these people; why do they look like they know him they’re closing in now angry marching he can’t hear their footsteps they’re saying something but he can’t here that as well _oh jesus fuck-_

He turns on his heels and runs for his life.

He doesn’t know how fast he’s running or how long he’s running or how far he’s running the world’s in a blur of colours it’s no longer day anymore it’s night and he’s weaving in between cars and they’re honking non-stop, a cacophony of noises that grates on his nerves slightly. He turns into an alley and stops, pressing his hand on a wall as he catches his breath, coming through as harsh, short gasps.

He’s called Eames. He’s somewhere in central Tokyo. He’s been here before. He’s been in Singapore on a job with the person he’s supposed to be looking for. He’s looking for Arthur. He’s got a bullet in his trouser pocket that reads _Why are you here?_ He knows he’s got to bring Arthur back ‘up’. He’s here because of that.

When he feels like he’s breathing normally again, he turns and enters a sushi bar. It’s fairly deserted. Save for a few couples and businessmen in suits eating sashimi and drinking sake. They don’t look antagonising, so he takes it to be an ok sign and takes a seat in front of the sushi chef.

The chef looks up, smiling as he serves him a plate of fugu and some sake. He realises that said male looks like the business tycoon he knows (a lifetime ago), only that his eyes are twinkling benignly.

He picks up his chopsticks and looks at the chef, who nods, and he puts a slice of fugu into his mouth. It’s fresh and melts away into his mouth, leaving a slightly sweet aftertaste on his tongue. “Oishii,” he tries to say, but that comes out as a rasp. He takes a mouth of the sake and swallows, letting the liquid warm his throat. “Oishii,” he repeats, this time with a smile.

“Arigato gozaimas,” the chef replies and does a polite bow. “I know you,” he says after a while in accented English.

He waits till he’s finished the slice of fugu and takes another sip of his sake. “And me you. Why are you here?”

“I should be asking you that question. Why are _you_ here?”

He sets down his chopsticks gently on the plate and his left hand drifts to his trouser pocket, slips inside and runs his thumb across the grooves created by the lettering.

“I’m not here to kill you,” the chef chuckles, as though reading his mind. “But _why_ are you here?”

He considers this for a moment before replying. “To find someone.”

“Very well,” the chef says. He stands a lets him behind the table to his workspace. “Through here,” he says, motioning to a door behind him. “Good luck.”

He opens the door and it turns out to be a staircase leading to somewhere. He climbs up the first flight, second, third, fourth, fifth, and doesn't see any other doors that can take him anywhere else. The door he entered through has probably faded into the walls and everything around him is grey and concrete.

He's supposed to find Arthur. Right.

He continues climbing up, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and the steps end at the very ledge he's perched on. He's been climbing up in a square spiral and he knows what this is, knows what it's supposed to be because he's seen it before. Oddly enough, it reminds him of Arthur.

There is a memory of a man wearing a well-tailored three piece suit that fits him perfectly running in hotel staircases. He tries to hold on to the memory, tries to grab it as his lifebuoy, but it's gone as soon as it came.

He feels something swell in his heart, a little like sadness and love and anger and nostalgia all rolled together into one. He smiles a little; he knows how this works. He's not going to die.

He steps off the ledge and falls.

-

He's in a hotel room in Helsinki, hazy with sleep and sprawled messily on the bed under the duvet. Arthur's equally a mess on him too, if not more: hair loose and ruffled, and despite consciously going to sleep on the other side of the bed, he ends up half on top of him. He's got a leg lying across his abs, a hand splayed possessively across his collarbone.

The sheets feel disgustingly sticky too, but he's too lazy to extricate himself from underneath Arthur's dead weight and drag himself into the shower. Instead, he settles for drinking in the sight of Arthur snoring slightly into the pillow, completely unguarded and vulnerable.

It fascinates him, really, to watch the transformation he can undergo within a matter of minutes. Arthur's not a morning person at all; he's as dead as a log. He snatches the pillow back when you try to take it away, his fringe flops back to cover his eyes, a makeshift sleep mask to shutter away the light amongst the living, he mumbles incoherently into he pillows. It's all very endearing.

Despite the many times they've managed to get into each other's pants, this is one of the very few times (the number is small enough for him to count on one hand) he's able to wake up with Arthur like this. He threads his hand into Arthur's hair just because he can, and runs his fingers through it, enjoying the tickle of his silky black hair on them.

On a moment of impulse, he presses a kiss into the back of Arthur's neck. "Mmmrf," the log rumbles.

"Darling, you do realise how delightful you are in the morning," he replies, feeling a rush of affection for this man. It's utterly mollifying that he's become monogamous for Arthur only, but then again, it's something he's willing to be.

"ShuddupEames'snotyetsevenlemmesleep."

He laughs, because Arthur's being absolutely endearing right now. "And here I thought you were a robot programmed to start the day at four."

Arthur makes a muffled noise into the pillow again (sounds like he's grumbling), and it looks like he's using some Herculean strength to push himself into a sitting position. "Morning," he mumbles once more, rubbing his eyes blearily.

"Good morning to you, too," he replies brightly, pushing himself into a sitting position as well. After a moment of consideration, he ducks his head and plants a kiss on to Arthur's lips.

"I love you," Arthur says quietly, after a minute he pulls back.

"Darling."

"Eames," Arthur says, picking at the duvet, refusing to look at him. Shit, he thinks. He knows it's the wrong thing to say, the inflections probably sounded wrong to Arthur. Desperate to make up for his mistake, he takes Arthur's free hand and laces their fingers together. Takes the other hand off the duvet (Arthur lets him), flips his wrist, gently presses a kiss there like he's a lover.

"Me too."

-

He wakes up in a hotel room and the filtered moonlight streams into the room. The clock on the nightstand to his left reads 4.46am and his dick's pressing uncomfortably against his boxers. He rolls out of bed, pads to the toilet, turns on the hot water and steps into the shower.

He thinks about the Arthur he knows, his impeccable self at work, the filthy things he rasps into the crook of his ear when they make out, his voice roughened with lust, his pliant body when he lets him fuck him, and comes messily after a few pulls. He stands in the hot shower for a few moments, letting the water warm his skin.

He's Eames and he's looking for Arthur. He's been to Singapore, Japan, and now he's in a hotel in Helsinki, Finland, where Arthur first told him that he loved him. He's got a bullet with Arthur's handwriting on it.

He still needs to find Arthur

He steps out of the shower and towels himself dry. It's summer right now, the Scandinavian sun streaming in through the windows, even though it's only 5.10am.

He doesn't look into the mirror.

When he gets back to his room, there's a white V-neck and a pair of black denim jeans waiting for him on his bed. He doesn't think he put the clothes there the night before, but he dons them on, anyway. There's a tiny bulge in his left pocket and he doesn't have to feel for it to know that it's the bullet from the forest.

_Why are you here?_

He thinks he can hear (the ghost of) Arthur’s voice asking him that question but the room is silent, save for the occasional whirr of the air conditioning unit. There’s a gun on his nightstand, a Glock, and beside it there’s a red poker chip.

He stares at the red poker chip. There’s a flurry of emotions that he can’t quite describe build up from somewhere within him. Fear, panic, relief, anger, determination, maybe calmness. It feels like he’s committed the crime of the century for seeing the red poker chip for the first time since… the start. It sits innocuously on the nightstand, making something sharp, striking, poignant beat against his chest, like he’s taken a bullet to it. It’s more than instinct when he picks it up and runs his right thumb across its grooves, spelling A-R-T-H-U-R along the way.

He’s dreaming.

He holds the poker chip in his hands for a moment, its weight a reassuring mass in his hands. He pockets it in his right pocket and picks up the gun.

 _I’m waiting_ , the words carved neatly into the barrel read and he takes in the sight of that too, hungrily, holding on to the little pieces of Arthur he has right now. He finds a leather jacket in the wardrobe and puts that on, keeping the gun in the side pocket.

The door is locked from the outside, so he tries to remember what the hotel card was like when he was here and a replica materialises in his hands. He tries the door and it opens, fortunately.

When he gets down to the lobby, he leaves the card on the concierge table and breaks into the car, just because he can. He hotwires the car and drives it to warehouse in the countryside, the place where he and Arthur and their team had done their preparatory work during the Stanley job.

The car rolls to a stop and he steps out of it, walking towards the warehouse. Standing outside is a little boy ( _Is he standing guard???_ ), probably around eight years old, tufts of brown hair and a cherubic face. Chocolate brown eyes, too.

He thinks this might be the child Arthur once was, but he’s not one to assume. He takes a few steps forward, kneels down before the boy and smiles. It’s a fatherly smile, not one that makes him look like a sex-deprived paedophile.

“ _Hey_ ,” he says in Finnish. The boy’s got a book in his hands, some Eoin Colfer adventure fantasy. The boy flicks him a cursory glance, before he goes back to being absorbed in the book.

“ _What's your name?_ ” he tries. The boy looks up from his book, his eyebrows furrowed together, like he’s irritated at him for disturbing him from his book. “Arthur,” he deadpans. “And I speak English.” He squints at him for a moment, before continuing with his Artemis Fowl.

“Oh, would you be _the_ Arthur I know, then?”

“Sir, I apologise but I have no idea who you associate with,” young-Arthur replies tersely. He bites back a chuckle at Arthur’s typical business formality. _It_ _transcends time_.

He stands, ready to ignore him and make his way into the warehouse (by picking locks, if needs be), but that’s when the game changes. Of course it changes here.

After he takes a couple of steps closer to young-Arthur, the boy has already put down the book and he’s just an arm’s length away from him. “Sir, I wouldn’t advise you on doing that.”

He knows he’s got at least a good half a metre on the boy, but when he looks down to face him, something else catches his eyes instead, He sees he might be just a millimetre or two away from the tip of the Santoku knife the latter’s holding on to firmly. His gaze is steady on his eyes. “Sir, I’d advise you to back off now.”

It seems laughable, ridiculous even, but the firmness in the boy’s stance tells otherwise. Young-Arthur is serious about this. He backs off.

“And pray tell, why am I not allowed into that warehouse?”

Young-Arthur still holds on to the knife, but he’s no longer pointing it at him. There’s a start. “Because I’m guarding it, _duh_.”

The last word startles out a laugh from him, only to have young-Arthur narrow his eyes into slits. It makes him feel stupid, almost idiotic, to even have him point that out to him. “Sure, I’ll give you that. Is it me who’s not allowed in, or does that apply to everyone?”

“Firstly, you’re the only one that’s decided to come here. Secondly, I know what ‘guard’ means, thank you. So even if someone else decides to come along, I’m still guarding the warehouse.”

Young-Arthur’s being right of a twat and testing his patience now. “Fine,” he says. “But I would like to get into this warehouse, so why don’t you start by being a love and telling me how?” He crosses his arms and waits, matching his glare with a stare. Two can play at this game.

After some time, young-Arthur stops glaring. “I’m not your ‘love’, if you may excuse me, sir. Why are you here?” he asks, without any preamble.

He’s been asked this question so many times it’s grating on his nerves. He exhales, long and purposeful, before replying. “To find someone.”

“Why.”

“To bring him back home. To tell him that this world, _his_ world isn’t real, that he needs to come back to reality.”

Young-Arthur smiles in approval (???) at his response and slips something into his jacket pocket. “The door isn’t locked, by the way,” he tells him as he walks away into thin air, leaving Artemis Fowl on the ground without so much as a backward glance.

He tugs open the warehouse door, expecting to see rickety lawn chairs and tables and flip boards, but what he sees is a white, pristine hallway. There are 11 doors, labelled 1 through 11 on each. He slips his hand into his jacket pocket, only to feel something hard and angular. He doesn’t need to see it to know what it is. There’s a sudden flare of panic bursting up in him, not the I’m-not-sure-where-I-am panic, but the this-is-so-wrong-I-shouldn’t-have-it-at-all _-why-is-it-doing-with-me_ panic. He can’t return it to young-Arthur; he’s a projection that’s already gone. He needs to find Arthur.

Almost certainly, he makes a beeline for the door labelled ‘11’ and enters it. It takes him into another white, empty room and there’s nothing in it, except for a Finn with a thick, red, bushy beard. He thinks he’s gotten the wrong room – this _can’t be_ Arthur at all - and turns back, but the door isn’t there anymore.

“ _I assume you're another one of his bodyguards, then_.” his Finnish is rusty; from the looks of the bearded man’s smirk, he knows he’s got the inflections wrong, too.

“ _So what if I am? So what if I'm not?_ ”

“ _I'm not going to play this bullshit philosophical game with you. Where is Arthur?_ ” He snaps, because suddenly, he’s just so, _so_ , tired of this. He’s desperate for this to end, but he won’t go just yet. Not without Arthur.

" _See, you have made a mistake. Don't assume. You of all people should know that_."

If there's anything about the bearded Finn that shows he's merely a disguise, it doesn't show. Maybe it's the way he said _You of all people should know_ that that makes him absolutely positive that this is Arthur, Arthur that he's been looking for all this while.

"You've got an interesting mind," he tells Arthur in English.

"That's interesting, you've always thought I was an unimaginative stick-in-the-mud," Arthur stands up and replies in English too. He's lost the accent.

"I'd like to refer that as highly orientated. Great job on the disguise, by the way."

"Thanks. I've got Finnish blood running in my veins."

"I thought so. Singaporean thugs, really?"

"That amused you too, don't deny it."

"I'm not. Nice meeting your childhood, too."

"So I heard." They're both standing face to face now, the doubt still lingering in Arthur's brown eyes. "Arthur," he says, finally.

"Eames," Arthur says, and he's Eames and he watches Arthur's disguise fade away, leaving the gelled back dark hair and impeccable man that he knows standing before him in a three piece suit (predictably). "Thank you."

Eames reaches into his jacket pocket and holds out a red die. Arthur takes it, studies it with great interest and rolls it on the chair he's been sitting on. One, one, one, one. They stand together and Eames touches Arthur's cheek with one hand, brings him in for a kiss.

When they break apart, Eames digs out the bullet from his left pocket of his jeans. "I believe you sent me this, darling."

Arthur doesn't even bother looking at it as he reaches for his own die. He smiles. "Do you like it?"

"You could've taken my head off with it, you know. Any last words?"

"Shall we?" The Glock from Eames's side pocket is in Arthur's hands now and he loads the gun with that one bullet. He presses the gun into Eames's hands and leans into him, resting his head on his shoulder. Eames cocks the gun at his temple and remembers what he's supposed to be do, remembers the world of reality is waiting for them, that he's supposed to bring them back up.

"We're going home now, darling," he tells Arthur and laces the fingers of their free hands together. He pulls the trigger.

There is a bang, and they fall through the darkness.

 

FIN

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Chao ji bai" translates to you cunt, although let's hope that this ugly thing, together with the gangsters don't make you hate singapore! (Country pride, yknow. Ehehehe :B) 
> 
> Title taken from Yo La Tengo.


End file.
